Compacting/Pruning the blockchain

[Bitsky]

Is there any tool around which compacts the blockchain, or prunes transactions older than x days?

My Bitcoin folder is a little over 1.5GB now, and the automatic daily backups start to get noticeable.

Also, is there a way to reduce the heavy disk I/O? It's annoying on harddrives, and it will wear down Flash based drives faster.

[Stephen Gornick]

Also, is there a way to reduce the heavy disk I/O? It's annoying on harddrives, and it will wear down Flash based drives faster.

Are you running the latest (0.6)?  It has improvements with regard to the database.

[Bitsky]

Are you running the latest (0.6)?  It has improvements with regard to the database.

Not on the server in my Lan which has the client running. It still runs on W2k, and the new versions don't work on that anymore sadly.

[Stephen Gornick]

Not on the server in my Lan which has the client running. It still runs on W2k, and the new versions don't work on that anymore sadly.

 [emphasis added]

Windows 2000's Security Model (after mainstream support ended in 2005 and extended support ended in 2010)



 - http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x=7&y=9&p1=7274

I understand that upgrading hardware and operating systems is expensive but why make it worse by adding hosting a bitcoin node as one of the functions that this server performs?

Hopefully you aren't storing more than two bitcoins on that box.

[DeathAndTaxes]

To answer you question there are no tools yet to support pruning the blockchain.

One thing to be aware if you can't just prune tx older than x days.  You can only prune tx which have been "spent" (used as an input in some subsequent tx).

The oldest spendable coinbase reward has never been spent (block #1, due to a bug the genesis block can never be spent).  If you pruned that tx and tomorrow someone used it in a tx your node wouldn't be able to validate that tx.  Worse it would consider that tx invalid and thus the block that includes it invalid too.   By incorrectly invalidating that block (and every block built on top of it) your node would be forked from the main chain forever.

Simple version:
No and even if/when they exist you will only be able to prune spent outputs.

[pc]

My Bitcoin folder is a little over 1.5GB now, and the automatic daily backups start to get noticeable.

This doesn't quite answer your question, but you only need to back up the wallet.dat file, which should be quite small. The rest could be downloaded again from the network if lost.

[Bitsky]

I understand that upgrading hardware and operating systems is expensive but why make it worse by adding hosting a bitcoin node as one of the functions that this server performs?

Hopefully you aren't storing more than two bitcoins on that box.

I know I should, but I just don't have the time to migrate everything to a new system. With some luck I can do it in my next vacation.

Simple version:
No and even if/when they exist you will only be able to prune spent outputs.

Even that would compact the blockchain nicely.

This doesn't quite answer your question, but you only need to back up the wallet.dat file, which should be quite small. The rest could be downloaded again from the network if lost.

True, but it would take really long for me, so adding the blockchain to the backup is the fastet restore option.

[grue]

I understand that upgrading hardware and operating systems is expensive but why make it worse by adding hosting a bitcoin node as one of the functions that this server performs?

Hopefully you aren't storing more than two bitcoins on that box.

I know I should, but I just don't have the time to migrate everything to a new system. With some luck I can do it in my next vacation.

Simple version:
No and even if/when they exist you will only be able to prune spent outputs.

Even that would compact the blockchain nicely.

This doesn't quite answer your question, but you only need to back up the wallet.dat file, which should be quite small. The rest could be downloaded again from the network if lost.

True, but it would take really long for me, so adding the blockchain to the backup is the fastet restore option.

since the blockchain isn't really important, you can just keep 1 copy for backup, or make a backup every 2 weeks. even then, it will only take about 10 minutes to catch up.

[jago25_98]

stick it on a drop box and mound the drop box, or a similar cloud solution, like box.net

would be good to do this with just the older part of the file. switch to electrum?